Applications of Biocatalysis in Industry

1 Chemical Industry of the Future Environmentally Benign Manufacturing, Green Chemistry, Sustainable Development in the Future 

Owing to two very strong and important driving forces the chemical industry of the future will look considerably different from today s version  

Processing with a view towards this new set of conditions focuses on the development of production routes with fewer processing steps, with higher yields on each step, to save material and energy costs. Less waste is generated, and treatment and disposal costs go down. Both pressures come together in the cases of environmental compliance costs. 

In this context, the three terms in the title are to a good extent synonymous nevertheless, they have been developed in a slightly different context  

It is better to prevent waste than to treat or clean up waste after it is formed. 

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The first section of this chapter describes the usage of enzymes in technical processes and concentrates on commercially important industrial enzymes. The interested reader can find a detailed description of the industrial use of enzymes in the book, Enzymes in Industry The application of biocatalysis in industry is covered in the second section, with an emphasis on the processes employed and the resulting products. 

The time is ripe for the widespread application of biocatalysis in industrial organic synthesis and according to a recent estimate [113] more than 130 processes have been commercialised. Advances in recombinant DNA techniques have made it, in principle, possible to produce virtually any enzyme for a commercially acceptable price. Advances in protein engineering have made it possible, using techniques such as site directed mutagenesis and in vitro evolution, to manipulate enzymes such that they exhibit the desired substrate specificity, activity, stability, pH profile, etc. [114]. Furthermore, the development of effective immobilisation techniques has paved the way for optimising the performance and recovery and recycling of enzymes. 

Ran, N., Zhao, T., Chen, Z. and Tao, J. (2008) Recent applications of biocatalysis in developing green chemistry for chemical synthesis at industrial scale. Green Chemistry, 10, 361-372. 

Applications of biocatalysis in large-scale processes in industry advance only slowly against established chemical processes, even with stoichiometry-based chemistry. Introduction of biocatalysis into existing processes often requires process modifications that are not economical in view of the short life span of the product and/or the low fixed costs of the existing process owing to written-off plant. It should be emphasized that the desire to reduce chemical wastes, imposed by either company policy or governmental measures, needs to be matched by favorable process economics. Therefore, the introduction of biocatalytic options at the very beginning of product and process development is of the utmost importance. 

Wohlgemuth, R. (2004) Large-scale application of biocatalysis in the asymmetric synthesis of laboratory chemicals, in Asymmetric Catalysis on Industrial Scale Challenges, Approaches and Solutions (eds H.U. Blaser and... 

Nearly eight years have passed since we the First Edition of Enzyme Catalysis in Organic Synthesis" was issued but much of what we had written in its preface then still applies today. The application of biocatalysis in organic synthesis is a powerful technique. It has grown steadily and today this field is well-established in both academia and industry. With increasing application and acceptance the need for a comprehensive and up to date overview of the state of the art has grown. In addition numerous colleagues have approached us and asked for an update of the Handbook . 

Much activity is evident in the application of enzymes in synthetic and natural products chemistry (9-26). Surprisingly, this is not a new field of endeavor, but rather one that was extensively developed for application in solving synthetic chemical problems in the steroid field. The earliest work in this field took place during the early twentieth century, and serious industrial application of biocatalysis began in the late 1940s (8). The successes obtained in steroid chemistry clearly underlined the potential for biocatalysis to contribute in other areas of natural products chemistry including that with the alkaloids. 

The field of biocatalysis in organic media is now of considerable industrial importance, enjoying widespread application, particularly in the preparation of enantiopure intermediates. 

For some recent reviews on the use of enzymes in nonconventional media, see (a) Dreyer, S., Lembrecht, J., Schumacher, J. and Kragl, U., Enzyme catalysis in nonaqueous media past, present, and future in biocatalysis in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, 2007, CRC Press, pp. 791-827 . (b) Torres, S. and Castro, G.R., Non-aqueous biocatalysis in homogeneous solvent systems. Food Technol. BiotechnoL, 2004, 42, 271-277 (c) Carrea, G. and Riva, S., Properties and synthetic applications of enzymes in organic solvent. Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 2000, 39, 2226-2254. 

Shimada, Y., Watanabe, Y., and Nagao, T. 2005a. Application of lipases to industrial-scale purification of oil- and fat-related compounds. In C. T. Hou (Ed.), Handbook of Industrial Biocatalysis (Chap. 8). Boca Raton, FL CRC Press, Taylor Francis Group. 

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